Frank Gifford, who died Sunday in Connecticut at age 84, was not just a Hall of Fame running back and broadcaster. He was also the unlikely inspiration for Frederick Exley’s 1968 “fictional memoir” “A Fan’s Notes,” which revolves in part around the author’s obsession with Gifford, both as a player for the New York Giants, and, before that, at USC.
“I cheered for him with such inordinate enthusiasm,” Exley writes of his hero, “...that after a time he became my alter ego, that part of me which had its being in the competitive world of men.